[pmonkey]

I have some women's shirts to print. They are black shirts and I will be printing them in pink with a white underbase off course.

My only problem is that on the front of the shirt I have very fine detail. I am wondering what type of mesh I should use. Being a black shirt I want to get a good amount of ink on it but with fine detail it may be a problem.

I was going to use a 158 mesh but would it be better to use a higher mesh? Maybe a 175 or 195?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[forward dc]

are you set up to print waterbased inks? if you are printing a lot of women's shirts, then you may consider using discharge and pigments. you can print the pigmented discharge through a 200 mesh and achieve fine detail, all through one screen, without having to worry about an underbase. your final prints will be soft!

if you do not want to invest in pigments, then you can print a discharge underbase and then print a thinned plastisol top color through a 200 and get a really soft print.

if you must print plastisol, and you are printing manually and without retensionable screens, you had better not go much higher than a 160 for your underbase if you want opaque top colors. use a stretch additive if the garment is ribbed.

 

[brent]

You shouldn't print discharge through a 200 mesh in a long print run, as it will clog, at least with my discharge, Matsui DSPS.
You could mix an opaque pink using Matsui waterbased inks and print through a 200 or 230 even, fine, and would need two, at most three, layers to make it look good. I did this the other day.

 

[pmonkey]

Right now I am only set up to print plastisol. I may have to think about the waterbased inks for the future. Never even new about stretch additives, that will help a lot. Thanks so much guys.

 

[forward dc]

You shouldn't print discharge through a 200 mesh in a long print run, as it will clog, at least with my discharge, Matsui DSPS.
You could mix an opaque pink using Matsui waterbased inks and print through a 200 or 230 even, fine, and would need two, at most three, layers to make it look good. I did this the other day.

Brent,

we use rutaland discharge base and additive and we have no problems printing through a 200 mesh on longer runs. we always mix the activator in with a jiffy drill mixer, keep the screen well flooded, and use a wetting agent that rutland called "lubricant" in order to keep the inks flowing and the screen open.

how do you like matsui inks? i've heard a lot about them but haven't used em yet . . .

do the opaque waterbased inks crack off of the shirt when you stack them up like that?

 

[dwhyle]

I have no trouble putting an underbase through high mesh (180,200). I always PFP on darks anyway. I use Rutland SF LB white and SF cotton white. Using high mesh also has the benefit of leaving a smoother finish and softer hand.